A fire at the American amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, continued for the second day, still waiting for its investigation and the findings about specific technical and organizational reasons. But to talk about those, and so are visible, you can now. But at the same time try to extract the lessons that can be useful to ourselves, in strict accordance with the proverb about the wise men who learn from others ‘ mistakes.Describing the situation in the Russian Navy, it is customary to use the term “crisis” and he quite correctly describes reality. The lack of vehicles and infrastructure, the slow pace of construction, entailing the failure of plans to modernise the fleet, the constant adjustment of already approved projects and programmes did not improve the situation— these are all symptoms of a systemic crisis, the reasons for which are many. And what about the United States Navy, and, in particular, can we say that they are in crisis?Yes, of course.For starters, the U.S. Navy is experiencing a deep crisis of governance, including both team and civilian hierarchy. A vivid sign of the crisis was the infamous case of “Tolstoy, Leo”, in which hundreds of officers of the Navy of the United States, including dozens of admirals, was suspected of corruption. The reason is simple to banality — just over 25 years, American ships entering the ports of countries in the Asia-Pacific region used the services of different vendors, one way or another semicassis one structure — Glenn Marine Group. For many years the company provided services shipchandler — ensuring the supply of food, water, fuel, electricity, garbage collection and other types of logistics and port services.The propensity of the U.S. Navy to the companies affiliated with Glenn Marine Group, due to the fact that the Manager and the owner, Singaporean businessman Leonard Glenn Francis (known by the nickname “fat Leonard” Fat Leonard) has provided its business with preferential terms through the systematic bribery of senior officers of the 7th fleet of the US Navy, in the zone of responsibility includes the Western Pacific ocean.The case was investigated, though not to the end: liability suffered mainly performers of lower and middle managers. Chain of suspicion stretched far above, disappearing into the pinnacle of the command posts of the US Navy in General and the Pacific fleet in particular, but with many stars, none of the admirals were prosecuted were not.The investigation is not affecting any of the leaders of the fleet, by whom this feverish activity to take place could not have left many officers of the U.S. Navy has a strange sense of incompleteness, without giving any guarantee of lack of repetition of similar incidents in the future.In recent years, the crisis of command has been exacerbated by the crisis of the civil administration of the Navy: after ray Mabus, ��animalshuge the position of Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2017, this post changed each other for five officials — Sean Stukeley, Richard Spencer, Thomas Monti, James MacPherson finally appointed in may 2020 Kenneth Braithwaite, while Spencer and Model had three times to change each other.In April 2020 both the crisis have merged into one: on the background of the epidemic of coronavirus in the U.S. Navy scandal, due to the requirement of the commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt Brett crozier to remove the ship from combat service for the quarantine. This requirement in the press (note that none of the addressees of the letter crozier had no right to share official document with journalists, but the leakage of information in the United States ceased to be surprised), led to the dismissal crozier at the request of the acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Model, and then to the resignation of Model (for the second). For what period of time in this chair late former Ambassador to Norway, rear Admiral, U.S. Navy Kenneth Braithwaite and will he be able to manage your fleet, hard to say.The U.S. Navy are experiencing a crisis of goal-setting. Donald trump went to the polls in 2016, promising among other things to increase the number of major classes of ships in the Navy to 355 units (now about 300). But the “355-ship plan” is still really not inscribed neither in the budget nor in the strategy and continues to be a set of wishes for health and prosperity without the implementation of the. Implement it in the usual way, that is, replacing old ships with new ones with some increase in strength is unlikely to succeed: it would be too expensive, given the need for the development of several new projects, including such complex as an aircraft carrier (the Gerald R. Ford type) and underwater nuclear submarine of the new generation (Columbia type). While the ultimate goal of increasing the number of the fleet is unclear. The U.S. Navy, even losing to Chinese fleet first place in the par number, are still the most powerful Navy on the planet, and tasks that require the essential enlargement currently available. No, of course you can imagine any scenario, including for example a heroic victory over the Chinese Navy in the remake of the battle for Leyte Gulf, where Chinese sailors 2020-ies will fulfill the role of the Japanese in 1944, but to increase this fleet size in General do not have.One way or another, but as time goes on, and the clear answer to the questions about the deliverability of a plan to increase the fleet and its meaning yet.Crisis management and goal setting is accompanied by a crisis of middle managers: the organization of service on vehicles and operation of machinery have become a sore spot. Regular outputs of military service polyspray ships, the fall of the skills of seafaring, the increase in incidents, including collisions with human victims, and numerous pre��send to incidents, not resulting in accidents, allow to speak about reduction of the combat and technical readiness of the U.S. Navy.What is happening is compounded by the crisis of construction and repair. With a few exceptions like the programme of boats of Virginia (which, however, cannot compensate for problems in adjacent areas) prices for the construction and repair of grow as well as the timing of works. While rising prices do not guarantee quality of work and materials that periodically leads to scandals of the type recently revealed the perennial supply of sub-standard steel for the construction of submarines.The salary of workers on the background of all this is not increasing, which leads to consequences of the type of the recent strike in the shipyard Bath Iron Works, one of the main suppliers of the U.S. Navy. And the growing volume of problems, as with the introduction of new technology, and conducting of routine works — and one of the symbols of these problems was the fire on the Bonhomme Richard.Delaying repair increases the load on the remaining ships in the formation are forced to regularly beat the record for the duration of military service. This causes an accelerated consumption of resource, technology and increased crew fatigue, resulting in and increase the likelihood of incidents, and increases the time needed for recovery after a campaign, turning the situation into a vicious circle.This is all, of course, not the causes of the crisis, it is its symptoms.What is behind them? The crisis of the US in General? It needs to analyze the americanists, but part of the military machine, this crisis finds direct reflection.To date, the U.S. armed forces and Navy in the first place do not have problems justifying their maintenance under the current structure, however, the crisis of political governance does not normally override these tasks. In the end we can say that the development of the United States Navy has evolved in the inertial process: with such a mass of involved structures and of funds it rolls by itself and is able to roll for a very long time. Eventually the exit will be found and how it will be implemented — while it is impossible to predict: in any case, first the output needs to look at the White house and on Capitol hill, and then he probably will be found in the Pentagon.Yes, of course, when all is said, the US Navy remains the strongest on the planet.
